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• Wushu out of the Olympics

  

  There may still be hope …

  I wrote about Wushu and the Olympics here before. The consensus then, as it is now, is that the International Wushu Federation has failed to identify itself clearly on the international stage like other sports have. Not only that, but in trying to do so, organized Wushu associations have done a disservice to the art and the practitioners, by diluting and distorting what wushu really is.

  Well, the verdict is in, and wushu was scrubbed from the short list of sports that could be in the Olympics come 2020. Wrestling, squash, and baseball/softball made it past the first round, while wushu, karate, wakeboarding, roller sports, and sports climbing failed to get in.

  I would say that wakeboarding, roller sports and sports climbing are real long shots, but its hard to say with the Olympics. They dropped world famous sports like wrestling and baseball, and took on golf, which appeals to a rather small audience. There are 39 criteria that the Olympics look at in order to evaluate whether or not a sport should be in or out.

  Reading reports about the selection process are instructive. Most refer to Wushu as something akin to gymnastics, with ceremonial sword and staff movements. Many reports also posit that Wushu’s bid suffered from not using the more well-known term “kung fu” …

  When I read things like this, I am just further convinced that the Chinese push to include Wushu is another misguided attempt at soft power without really realizing what sport, Olympics, Wushu, or soft power are really all about.

  June 1, 2013 • Modern Kung Fu • Views: 4780

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• Globalizing Kung Fu Part 2: Wushu and the Olympics

  One way to globalize an art is to simplify it, give it rules that anyone can understand, and then submit it for an international review to the association most likely to be interested in the art. For martial arts, this process is known as sportification: Making the art of warfare and spiritual enlightenment into a game that anyone can play.

  Sportification naturally divides the practitioners of any martial art into two opposing camps: purists who believe that simplification ruins and eventually mutates the art into something else; and pragmatists (for lack of a better word), who believe that without simplification and marketing, martial arts will die a slow, but inevitable death.

  Both Judo and Taekwondo have gone through the process and were awarded with spots in the Summer Olympics, the former in 1968 at the Tokyo Games and the latter in 1988 at the Seoul Games. Given that the 2008 Summer Olympics were in Beijing, it would have stood to reason that the heavy lobbying by the Chinese government and the International Wushu Federation would have had a similar result. But wushu was denied. As consolation, the IWUF was allowed to stage a parallell event in Beijing, and continue fostering hopes that wushu will become an official Olympic Sport in 2020 at the Macao Games.

  But the odds are slim. Seven sports are competing for one open spot in the 2020 Games, and wushu is competing against some tough customers, including the “united sport” of baseball and softball, squash, karate, and roller sports.

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  November 12, 2012 • Modern Kung Fu • Views: 11330

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